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Seared Thai Basil Salmon (แซลมอนซอสกะเพรา)
Seared Thai Basil Salmon
This seared Thai style salmon recipe may be one of the best salmon dishes I have ever had. There is surprisingly little of the fishy odor and flavor that salmon often has and it presents beautifully in the trending minimalist style. A theory for why we like spicy and strongly spiced foods is that historically you could cover up the fishy tastes or in less developed countries even when something was slightly spoiled or just cover up the bad flavors and smells.
Salmon Filet
Another reason I like this recipe is for how delightfully easy the preparation is. With the advent of nicer deep discount stores like Costco, Sam's Club and Aldi, you can now buy decent meats on a budget from the freezer section in bulk. We just take them out of the freezer the day before so it can defrost and then just chop the vegetables and sear and in about 10 minutes you have a light yet protein and vitamin packed dinner which looks like something from a 5 star restaurant.
Basil Sauce Ingredients
Why salmon Is one of the best choices
Salmon has long been known to contain a lot of the important fatty acids that are thought to be part of the reason for Japanese having the longest lifespan of any human on the planet. A week or 2 ago I came across more evidence to support eating fatty protein as a way of helping the body deal with stress, especially when you are restricting caloric intake such as in restricted calorie diets for longevity. Here is a video of the restricted calorie diet I have been trying for the last few years.
The reason the fatty meats are good in this situation is that when your body goes into stress mode there are some bad effects and participants of experiments eating either carbs or fats on restricted calorie diets had better results when they were using fats for the calories they were in-taking. See this article for more details.
Seared Thai Basil Salmon
Being choosy when buying your salmon
When Choosing your salmon I always recommend using recommended salmon from the Monterrey Bay Aquarium's Seafood Watch website or app for choosing sustainable seafood. It sometimes has other useful tips as well and you can use it from your smart phone while you are at the market to compare what they have with what's recommended. The information on the webapp is extensive so I recommend just checking it on a case by case basis for now.
- • 2 salmon filets.
- • ½ medium white onion sliced.
- • 1 cup basil leaf.
- • 2-3 crushed Thai peppers.
- • 1 tablespoon low sodium soy sauce.
- • 1 tablespoon fish sauce.
- • pinch Stevie.
- • Oyster sauce to taste.
- • 3 tablespoons of olive oil, for sear salmon and for stir fry the basil sauce.
- Turn the stove to medium heat and heat the 1-2 tablespoon oil depending on how much fish you're cooking.
- Add the salmon and sear until tender and or changes color slightly, or to about 140-160 degrees if you want to be thorough.
- Put the salmon on a plate and keep the pan as is for the sauce preparation.
- Add another tablespoon or 2 of olive oil to the pan and heat again at medium high.
- Stir-fry the onion to caramelize until slightly transparent.
- Add the basil leaves, follow with soy sauce, oyster sauce, fish sauce, Thai chili, and Stevia stir-fry until they turn a darker shade of green.
- After the basil sauce is done, pour it the seared salmon on the plate. Eat with brown rice or lettuce iceberg or nothing for the lite version.
KimS says
I made this -- it was delicious. I bought a Thai Basil plant at the farmer's market (it was huge!) Has been great for delivering a lot of Thai Basil.
Adam says
We want to do that too. Mod's restaurant grows it in buckets behind the restaurant. Really easy to grow. Thanks so much for the complement!